Thoughts on Romans - Day 15

                            Romans 6:11-16

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³ Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
¹⁵ What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?


              As I said in the last blog, which I feel is OK to repeat since Paul is repeating himself a lot, (and since he is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that must mean God repeats Himself which means my wife is a very Godly person) the wrong attitude or question is "How close can I get to sin without sinning"? It is like our children asking," what is the worst television show you will let me watch?" Or, "What cuss words can I say"? or, "how far can I go with my boy/girl friend without it being a sin?" Paul says we are dead to sin and alive to Christ. We are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to Christ. Those kind of questions are kind of hybrids. They say I want to be a slave to Christ but sin is not dead. Sin is too much fun to let it die, so let me feed it just a little. Paul would say the proper question isn't "how close can I get to sin without sinning, but how humanly close can I get to God?

           I guess in my field of OB/GYN, if a baby is in distress I wouldn't say "how long can I let this distress go on before the baby suffers brain damage"? I would rather ask, "how can I deliver the brightest, healthiest baby?" Or in surgery, "how unsterile can we be without getting an infection?" (OK I have asked that on mission trips) but rather "how germ free can we make this surgery?" When we ask questions these ways, it is obvious which question we should be asking. So why is it that in our moral spiritual lives we settle for the lesser choice? And a better question, knowing that we do this is how can we stop doing this and start striving for the best?

       Paul gives 4 commands - count, don't let, don't offer, and offer. The 2 positives are count and offer. These 2 make me think of every day in my quiet time I preach the gospel to myself. I say," I have died with Christ on the cross and therefore sin has died too. I am alive through the Holy Spirit's regeneration and I will let Him live the life of Christ through me. So here are my hands, my tongue, my eyes, my whole body is surrendered to You to do as You wish." And then the negatives are don't let and don't offer. These 2 make me think of setting up boundaries in my life - areas that are far enough away from sin that if I happen to go there, my conscience will go crazy, yet without sinning. For example when my youngest son was dating his future wife they made a rule never to be in a house alone together. Would that have been a sin - no but they didn't want to" let" or "offer" so they made rules far away from sin so that if it happened we would get phone calls asking how soon we could get home because they were sitting outside on the porch. These 2 negatives make me think also of accountability groups to ask you the tough questions and lovingly hold each other accountable.

      Lord, this sounds like we need to take this sin thing seriously. Forgive me for making more plans on making money and planning time off than I do planning not to sin and scheming how to get closer to You. Change my priorities and help the motivation to be passionate love for You. Amen